Mad cow: a civilizational crisis

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Sahara Times February2004Mad cow: a civilizational crisisBy Sandhya JainRecent

incidents of bird flu and mad cow disease in leadingmeat-exporting nations are

symptomatic of a much largercivilizational crisis, and must not be brushed

aside ortreated as mere health or gastronomic matters that should behandled by

competent meat inspectors. Discerning citizensworldwide, especially in India,

deserve to know howglobalization and the profit motive have been driving the

meat industryto commit unthinkable obscenities upon living animals, withresults

that may prove too horrendous to imagine.Ιou are what you eat,⠯ur sages have

long warned us, andthe food consumed by us, particularly the manner of

itspreparation, has long been a matter of concern to civilizedpeople. That is

why citizens in our part of the world, whoare being driven inexorably by

attitudes

and lifestyles ofwestern civilization, have a right to know that

contemporaryepidemics caused by meat and meat products are mostly theresult of

willful disregard for ordinary standards ofhygiene and decency by what is now a

multi-billion dollar meatindustry. Nick Fiddes, in Meat, A Natural Symbol

(Routledge, London,1991) has documented that less than 10% of

Britishslaughterhouses meet European hygienic standards, and thatinspectors

routinely complain of inadequate sterilization andruptured intestines that

smear the meat with faeces. Theinfections caused by such meant include

salmonella, compylobacter,tapeworm, listeria, toxoplasmosis, and

chlamydiosis.In 1988, Fiddes records, a controversy arose in Britainover the

levels of salmonella contamination in eggs andchickens. Media investigations

then revealed that a principalcause of the epidemic was that the meat industry

had

beenfeeding carcasses of dead chickens to living chickens as aprotein

supplement, with the result that the infection wasperpetuated. As for BSE

(bovine spongiform encephalopathy),popularly known as the mad cow disease,

which is believed tohave Ϊumped⠳pecies from sheep to cattle, and now

ontohumans, the same pattern was repeated in 1989-90. It was foundthat British

cattle were being fed the remains of sheep toincrease productivity (i.e. they

were artificiallyfattened), and some of the sheep had probably suffered

fromscrapie, a γpongiform⠤isease epidemic.Last December, US beef exporters

were badly hit as Japan,South Korea, Australia, Hong Kong, Singapore,

Malaysia,Taiwan, Russia and South Africa banned imports following thediscovery

of mad cow disease, even though Federal officialsinsisted the supply was safe

(Pioneer 25 December 2003). Fewnations were impressed by the American argument

that themeat from

sick animals was not infectious, and that theinfection was restricted to the

tissues of the nervous system,which were ãµ®likelyä ´o enter the food supply of

people orof animals susceptible to the disease (Hindustan times 26December

2003).Their caution is understandable, as BSE is linked to arare, progressive

and fatal degenerative brain disease. Itsoutbreak in Britain in the past decade

has been linked to thepractice of grinding dead sheep and cows and feeding them

to other cows. BSE is linked to a protein called prion,which turns the brain

into a spongy mess, and moves with easefrom one animal species to another, as

also to humans. Theseprions are not destroyed by cooking and other

conventionalmethods.The western meat industry has been found to be guilty

ofother abhorrent practices as well. A 1985 television show in

Britain showed that sausages and other industriallyprocessed meat comprised of

parts of animals normally consideredinedible (not eaten in the normal

household). All theseissues, though known in the west, are not adequately known

anddebated in India and other countries that are beingtargeted for the sale of

such meat, with tantalizing press reportsabout chicken legs at a mere Rs. 18/-

a piece. The issuesat stake here are not just that the meat is very likely tobe

contaminated, as the US meat industry has so far resisteda ban on the slaughter

of animals that are too sick for theslaughter-house. Far more important is the

basic principle of duplicitouslyfeeding herbivorous animals with the remains of

deadanimals of their own or other species, in the form of food cakesand other

processed food. In the process, animal speciesintended by nature to be

vegetarian are

forcefully mutatedinto carnivorous cannibals.We cannot yet imagine the

consequences of this action,which the governments of western nations have known

about fornearly two decades, and have done little to stop, even ashuman rights

activists from those lands rant and rave aboutchild labour in underdeveloped

nations. The quality of themeat of these herbivores-turned-carnivores is surely

theleast important, though it is what will grab the publicimagination.By far the

worst-case scenario is the rise of a mutantspecies as the Τumb⠡nimals being

reared for meat in meatfarms, protected from public scrutiny by benign

governments,reproduce after being made unwittingly carnivorous. Thepossibility

of such a horror upon the natural world cannot bebrushed aside lightly.

Meanwhile, the pharmaceutical andprocessed food industry is at special risk

from thesecarnivorous animals as their tissues are widely used for a range

ofpurposes, from manufacturing vaccines and surgical andprosthetic products, to

foods and food supplements.Prion-related disease has an enormous potential for

damage,as it is known to lie dormant for many years. It istherefore imperative

that the public be made aware of theseissues, and meat-exporting nations be

held accountable for theirproducts and manufacturing processes at forums like

WTOwhen issues of agriculture and agri-business are debated.End of matter

 

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